Damon Runyon

At the Fights American Writers on Boxing Edited by George Kimball & John Schulian Library of America: 517 pp., $35 Part freak show, part sitcom, part mortal combat — ah, yes, behold the world of professional prizefighting, the face-break social network, an ultraviolent art and craft that to some is more subhuman than true sport. Or, as a fictional character unlocked by a key to Rod Serling's imagination once put it, ever so luridly: "Sport? Are you kiddin'? If there was headroom, they'd hold these things in sewers." Oh, I miss it so. Not the splatter of plasma and phlegm that would fleck any of us occupying a chair at ringside. Not the leaky eyesocket...